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15 August 2015

Family Day at Spirit Saint-Nazaire site, where A350 large aerostructures are assembled.

Spirit’s facility in Saint-Nazaire, France, hosted a Family Day Open House event in honor of Spirit’s 10th anniversary as a company in late-June.

A total of 300 visitors, including employees and their family members, enjoyed the rare opportunity to tour Spirit’s Saint-Nazaire factory, where large aerostructures are assembled for the Airbus A350 XWB.

Employee volunteers hosted booths, where they explained their jobs and answered questions.

Videos and images of assembly were broadcast to help guests understand the production process.

The event featured a catered meal, cocktails, and giveaways for each visitor.

“We were very proud to welcome the public and the media to our site on this occasion,” said Jean-Christophe Danieau, director of Spirit France.

“This event was possible because of the commitment and passion of our employees.”

“We receive by boat the panels manufactured in Kinston. We assemble and then deliver them to our neighbor Airbus. The sections then travel to Toulouse by Beluga.”

We are currently in the series phase with a full ramp up. The company has delivered to Airbus last June his 42nd central section (a large aerostructure of 20 meters long and 6 meters in diameter).

Currently the rate is 4 shipsets per month, it will be 5 at the end of the year, 7 in 2016 and 10 per month in 2017.

For this we have just installed a 2nd assembly line (versatile that can also accommodate the A350-1000 version shipsets).

The company has 120 employees and it is considering hiring 15 blue-collars before the end of the year.

Based on the article “Spirit gagne en confiance et s'ouvre au public” published in Ouest-France.

How about reporting on why deliveries are taking so long. Earlier Airbus thought they would deliver 17 planes by the end of the year. Half-way through Q3 and they only have 5! Is it the supply chain? Is it manufacturing? If this was Boeing, the news would be eating them alive.

Quite agree AIT. "Going slow to get it right" was the slogan. Anonymous which ever way you spin it, they are still wayout on delivery. Even with your figures that only accounts for 16 max so where are the 26 centre bodies? and thats Spirits figures upto june,what about Julys? The real point here,is that with this very slow production,customers and suppliers suffer.

Sorry but you never read properly - 34 aircraft have been built or are being built do there are only 8 not currently in use. You also seem to fail to understand the complexities of large industrial scale-up processes. Airbus are likely to deliver at or very close to their target this test. Qatar seem happy - their CEO would be very vocal if he wasn't.

It's one or the other. Either 34 aircraft have been built or they're not built. We can be honest with each other and agree that the ramp up has not gone to plan yet. Yet. But the lag is concerning since the competition is delivering 2 models of the similar type at a rate of 10/month. It's valid for the concern of some to think things are not going to plan.